Category: Rants

A Overview of the Sento Fighter/Power Well Conflict, and the Nature of Designer Credit

Disclaimer: This post uses real names, and talks about an ongoing conflict. If after reading it, you feel strongly that one side or the other is in the right here, I urge you to channel that feeling into support for that side’s project. Do not harass or make personal attacks against anyone.

Four years ago at PAX East, I played a demo for a game called Sento Fighter. It was a match 3, 1v1 dueling game with a marble selection system, designed by Brother Ming. It was under contract to be published by Penguin & Panda Games. Due to Penguin & Panda’s mismanagement of other projects, it would never go to production.

Just under a year ago, at PAX East, I demoed a game called Power Well. It was a match 3, 1v1 dueling with a marble selection system, being developed by Red Planet Games. Red Planet Games was clear with me that it was inspired by Sento Fighter, and initially, right after PAX, Ming was positive about the game.

This past Sunday, the CEO of Red Planet Games, Martin Myles, put up an 8,000 word post accusing Ming of extortion, and calling him a bully. Ming responded by calling Myles a hack who refused to credit him and announcing that he had acquired the rights back to Sento Fighter, and would be publishing it as Re;MATCH. Ming also included a 12-item list of shared mechanics between the games.

So what on Earth happened, and how did we get here?

Table of Contents

Overview
A Timeline of Events
How Law Functionality Works in Board Games
Designers, Developers, and Publishers in Board Games
The Events of July 5th
Welcome to the Court of (my) Public Opinion
Disclosures
Sources

Overview

In the last few days, what began as a private disagreement between Brother Ming (designer of Sento Fighter), and Myles Martin (CEO of Red Plant Games) about whether Brother Ming should be credited as a game designer on Red Planet’s game Power Well, has turned into a full on public feud. This writeup is intended to lay out a timeline for what led to these events, and give some additional context.

Since I don’t want it to get buried, here’s my personal opinion:

1. Brother Ming deserves designer credit for Power Well. 

2. Nobody here has publicly broken any laws or committed any crimes. Even if Red Planet Games publishes Power Well and doesn’t credit Brother Ming, they won’t have committed a crime.

3. Taking all participants at their word, I view this mess as more the result of incredibly unfortunate miscommunication and questionable legal ownership of the design than anything else. I’d like to believe no one here set out to rip someone else off without credit, even if this probably paints me as quite foolish.

This is my opinion as of 9/25/24, and it’s quite possible it changes if more information comes out.

Timeline

It’s 2018. Brother Ming begins prototyping a game called Orb Strikers. The rights to Orb Strikers will later be licensed to Jason Moughon for $10,000 and renamed to Sento Fighter. 

Jason Moughon is the CEO of publisher Penguin and Panda, and later Big Kid Games. Penguin and Panda successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns for several games, notably Onimaru. Onimaru was expected to deliver in 2019.

P&P failed to fulfill this campaign in a timely manner. There is mixed opinion on Jason Moughan in the board game community. Many backers for projects he ran feel that they have been scammed. They point at his behavior of setting up Big Kid Games after P&P acquired a poor reputation. Other individuals feel that Jason ended up in over his head, and failed to correctly manage the costs of production and delivery, not that he set out to scam people. 

But in 2020 Jason still has his reputation intact. Penguin and Panda is demoing Sento Fighter at multiple game conventions, including PAX East and PAX South. Myles plays it, and really enjoys it. He’s excited to see the final product. 

Things continue to get worse for Penguin and Panda throughout 2021. They continue to fail to fulfill Onimaru, and some of their distribution partners begin to disavow them, as can be seen here in an archived post from Japanime Games. 

As a result, Sento Fighter is never crowdfunded or produced, and exists purely as a Board Game Geek page, a mailing list sign up page, a private Tabletop Simulator Mod, a few photos from conventions, a Penny Arcade post and a single two hour liveplay from collective content group Love Thy Nerd. 

Over the next few years, Brother Ming attempts to buy back the rights to Sento Fighter so he can continue development and publish the game, but is rebuffed by Jason. 

In 2023, Myles Martin is chatting with his brother, and the two end up discussing Sento Fighter, and wondering what happened to it. After failing to find any info, they decide to attempt to recreate the game. They name their group Red Planet Games.

In January of 2024, the Red Planet Games team feels they have a strong game to demo. They end up getting a booth at PAX East. Brother Ming first learns about Power Well through direct messages from players at PAX East, and is immediately worried that the game is somehow connected to Jason Moughan. This suspicion is largely irrelevant to the rest of the events that follow, except that it does serve to illustrate the miscommunication that will occur between Myles and Ming. 

They connect over Discord, and then over the next several months, they will continue to sporadically message, and even get dinner. Unfortunately, while this could have served to defuse the situation, they mostly piss each other off. Below are a few examples. 

  • Ming comes in initially somewhat suspicious of Jason being involved, as Jason has a history of trying to start new companies to dodge his bad reputation. It’s not helped by the fact that Myles has made really nice prototypes. Miscommunication #1
  • Ming tweets about the game to Jerry Holkins, AKA Tycho Brahe, writer for Penny Arcade and founder of PAX. Myles takes this as a sort of attempted flex on him and Red Planet, as opposed to the “Yo, this shit is cool” that it is. Miscommunication #2
  • Ming asks Myles to consider hiring the original Sento Fighter artist to do some of the artwork. Myles has a family member doing the art, and so instead takes this request as an insult. Miscommunication #3
  • Ming makes suggestions about the ethnicities of the characters. Myles feels that Ming is trying to tell him how to make his game. Ming feels that Myles is taking his own work, and removing his impact on it. There’s a larger discussion here that I’m not qualified to comment on, but I will note that this sort of discussion often comes up between designers and publishers during contract negotiation. Miscommunication #4
  • Ming and Myles get dinner to try to sort of calm things down. While there are no “Chat logs” for dinner, Myles comes away from the experience feeling personally attacked. Miscommunication #5!
  • Ming notes that Jason might be litigious. Myles decides he needs to make sure his project is above board legally, and will later hire lawyers for advice. This single moment is the match that will ultimately torch any hope of this being resolved amicably. 

This all continues to just simmer, right until July 5th where things finally kick off.

But first….

A Brief Note on Legal Matters within the Board Game Industry

I’m not a lawyer. This is not discussing what the law is when it comes to board games, but the current state of how the law seems to actually work here in September of 2024, in the United States. At least in regards to small and medium size board game publishers and designers.

There are a lot of open and expensive questions about the nature of things like copyright, patents, and just the general mess that is intellectual property when it comes to board games. However, unlike the video game industry, nobody in board games has any money. So, nobody sues each other, because they don’t have the money to spend on the lawsuits, and even if they won, it’s unlikely they would recoup their costs. 

The end result is that because the industry is so small, everything gets decided in the court of public opinion. If you can convince everyone a game ripped you off, you don’t need to sue anyone. You just convince the public and many people won’t buy the games, because again, this industry is tiny. 

Is this good? No. It gives large companies outsized ability to pressure and control terms, while leaving the actual legal questions in limbo because no one can afford to litigate. It allows small scale rip-offs, and copying of games from outside territories. It results in a lot of drama. But it is how things actually currently work. 

And now, a second brief bit of context setting. 

Designers, Developers, and Publishers in Board Games

The court of public opinion in board game development is a result of norms that exist because of the board game industry’s small size. But it’s not the only weird norm. One easy example to point at is the fact that no one is asked to sign NDA’s at things like Unpub, or for playtests. After all, a legally binding contract doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the money to enforce it (or if the IP doesn’t legally exist). 

Another example is the importance of credit, and properly having credit assigned. Again, this is a small industry. Credit on projects is a resume, and proof of prior work. But different types of credit mean different things. Here’s a very brief overview of some of those types of credit. 

Game Designer – This is the person who did the work for most of the game systems, and what is seen as the bulk of the game design work. They made the prototypes, they conceived of the systems. 

Publisher – The publisher, on the other hand, often does all of the “not game design” work. This can include, but is not limited to marketing, production, final art, distribution deals. It might also include things like re-theming, or artistic character design. It’s a huge amount of work, which is why game designers often sell their designs to publishers in the first place. 

Game Developer – The developer, then, is a sort of intermediary between the two. They often, but not always, work for a publisher. Their job is to take the core elements that a designer has created and bring them to a production-ready state. This can include designing some small mechanical elements of the game, or redesigning systems or themes, or even adding or removing existing mechanics. It’s a complex job and necessary job, but it mostly involves working with a core system they’ve already been given. 

The Events of July 5th

Myles’ accusations against Ming stem from this discussion. I’m going to break this down with some images. 

This is Ming’s first request. 

He asks for 3 things. 

1. Credit as a game designer on the Project

2. $1500 to license a character from one of Ming’s other games to the project. 

3. A written contract stating they will pay him $3000 if Power Well is successful enough to merit an expansion. There is no guarantee that the game will be.

Myles makes the following counter offer of $4,500, for:

1. A license for a Re:Act Character
2. The ability to provide a non-designer credit for the work Brother Ming did
3. A thank you in the rulebook
4. Brother Ming will stop making any public statements about Power Well in a negative connotation.

Critically, Myles does not want to give Brother Ming a designer credit on Power Well. In his public post, Myles justifies this based on his concern he will open himself up to a lawsuit from Penguin and Panda if he does so.

Brother Ming believes he is entitled to this credit as he designed the core systems that at a bare minimum inspired Power Well. 

Ming does not like this offer, primarily because it results in him not being credited as a game designer. He responds with the following counter offer primarily intended to point out how ridiculous it was to not give him designer credit. (Ming has since retrospectively noted that this was “a dumb plan”. ) 

1. Red Planet Games will pay Ming $11,500 dollars. $10,000 for the design, and $1500 to license a character from Re;Act

2. Red Planet Games will not have to credit Ming as a Designer on the project. 

3. All terms from the above discussion.

Myles, after consulting his own industry sources, decides not to respond. 

On August 5th, post Gen Con, Ming reaches out to try to explain why the game designer credit is important to him. Unfortunately, while Ming is being sincere, it’s easy to see how someone (Myles) would see this as condescending. 

In essence, Ming is trying to get Myles to understand that from his point of view, Red Planet Games has done is mostly development and publishing work, and as such, Ming is owed designer credit. 

On August 7th, Myles responds to Ming. He feels attacked by Ming. He does not feel that Ming is a designer on Power Well. He also feels that because Ming sold the game to Jason, Ming isn’t entitled to any more money for the design, and that he has done enough already. 

Ming makes one last attempt to convince him.  Myles does not respond. 

On August 7th, Brother Ming tweets about not receiving credit, and posts a cropped portion of the final message from Myles. This cropped portion does not include the discussion of costs/payment. 

Around September 11th, a long term detractor of Brother Ming succeeded in getting one of Ming’s projects DMCA’ed by Nintendo. This individual is not affiliated with Red Planet Games. Ming believes this is the result of the feud with Red Planet Games, though this mostly a matter of personal opinion. While this individual has bragged about this “achievement” on the Red Planet Games Discord, there is absolutely nothing to suggest Red Planet had any involvement in the DMCA request.

In response to Ming’s tweets on August 7th, on September 22nd, Myles posts the document outlining his interactions with Ming.

On September 24th, Ming announces that he has reacquired the rights to Sento Fighter, and plans to relaunch the game as Re;MATCH, and that he will make a public statement in the next few days. 

On September 25th, Ming posts his statement. He’s generally in agreement on the timeline, but clarifies several notable points, including his concern around ethnicity of the characters in the game, his actual intentions with the $10,000 offer, and notably lays out a 12 point list of similarities between the two games.

Now that I’ve laid out the publicly provided information of both Myles and Ming, I’m entering the realm of personal opinion. 

The Court of (my) Public Opinion

In the time since Myles has posted his statement on the 22nd, I’ve run it past my industry contacts, and some folks in their circles.

Myles chose to put this into the “Court of Public Opinion.” I suspect he’s not going to like the response he gets, especially among designers and small publishers.

Their general take is as follows: While the whole situation is messy, and at some points could have been handled better, Ming is in the right here. Folks have tended to feel that Myles’ statement is not as exonerating as Myles had hoped. To be clear, this was before even seeing Ming’s side of the story.

It’s not a universal opinion. There are people who feel that the distance in time is enough to justify what Red Planet Games have done. But there are even more who feel that it crosses a line to rebuild a game that you already know exists, and try to bring it to market. 

While Myles views the work that his team has done as comparable to cloning a video game, that’s not how the board game industry is likely to see it. Instead, it appears to them that Myles is attempting to rip off someone else’s design, refusing to pay or give them credit, and then rush it to market as a product, not for the love of making games.  

Like I said earlier, I’d like to think no one set out to be an asshole here. I’d prefer to believe that Myles’ lack of familiarity with the industry has led him to cross a lot of lines he may not have been familiar with. Frankly, that probably will do nothing but make me look like a naive idiot to both sides. So be it.

That said, while I’m going to try to keep my distance here, I’m going to make one big suggestion to Red Planet Games: Ban the person who has been attempting to harass Ming and DMCA Ming’s projects from your Discord server. You’re doing yourself absolutely no favors by even passively giving the appearance of endorsing the actions of someone who uses anonymous harassment and legal threats as a cudgel against others.

What Red Planet Games has done is generally against industry norms, but they have every legal right to produce and sell Power Well, and never mention Ming again. I don’t think they should.

Why I’m Writing This

I’ve been following both of these projects for quite some time, and I was initially enthusiastic about both. My (frankly terrible) writeup on Sento Fighter is one of the earliest posts on this blog. I was really looking forward to Power Well.

I feel strongly that Brother Ming deserves credit on Power Well for his work that the game very clearly, at a minimum, cribs from. Initially, this didn’t seem like it would be an issue, as Myles and others told me at PAX East that they would doing so.

When things turned sour, I wrote, but chose not to post a write-up detailing why I thought Ming deserved credit. At the time I would just have been starting drama, and I figured that I might not have the full picture. I suspected that there might be info related to Penguin and Panda that might make Myles feel he could not credit Ming in a fair manner without opening himself up to a lawsuit, something I was dead on the money about.

However, as Myles and Ming have now both made their sides of the story clear, and for public viewing, I no longer feel that I’m either out of the loop, or misinformed as to the thoughts and feelings of the primary actors here. While some of the information presented has caused me to carefully reconsider my own thoughts and run them past those more familiar with the industry, I’m ultimately still convinced that Ming deserves Game Designer credit on Power Well.

Disclosures

My name is John Wallace, and I often go by Fritz. I’m the primary writer/owner of Gametrodon. I don’t work in the game industry on any level, but I do have a few contacts and connections with those who do.

The extent of my connections with the two primary folks involved here, Brother Ming and Myles Martin are as follows:

1. I’ve interviewed Brother Ming previously about the nature of fan projects, mostly in regards to Mihoyo and their policies. I also reached out to him for some clarification on statements made prior to posting this writeup, and prior to the release of his public response. 

2. I chatted briefly with Myles Martin at PAX East this year about Power Well, and played a demo. I was planning to reach out to get his point of view right before he put up a 8000 word public statement on Sunday.

Sources

Myles Martin’s Initial Statement

Ed Note: When Myles refers to J in his censored documents, he’s talking about Jason Moughan of Penguin and Panda, and Big Kid Games.

Brother Ming’s Response

Neither Myles nor Ming have debated the authenticity of the messages posted.

However, for pretty obvious reasons, they have fairly different takes and feelings about the nature of the interactions, and characterize them quite differently. 

I’ve taken backups of these statements, but linked to the source. Should that source go down, I will be hosting the statements myself. This article was written with the content as it was on 9/22/2024 for Myles Statement, and 9/25/2024 for Brother Ming’s statement.

Updates/Revisions:

Any changes/updates to this post made after it has gone live will be noted here.

5/15/2025 Update: Both of these games were at PAX East 2025, and are gearing up to move into launching Kickstarters possibly in the next year, so I’ll be quietly observing. In the event that the original source of the statements are removed/changed, I’ll be putting up my backups, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue yet.

My Hero Academia – A Retrospective

Tangent #1

This is going to be a write-ups of semi-tangents, as part of a larger points. Lets start with this one: My favorite sports writer is Jon Bois. In one of his videos, he makes an interesting point about the nature of critique of athletes. Here, I’ll link it.

I think it could be summarized as follows: The worst Baseball player in the MLB is one of the best Baseball players in the world. But by being in the MLB, it no longer really matters that you’re good, because now it’s only relative.

My Hero Academia ran for just over 10 years in Shonen Jump, or 520 weeks. It finished at 430 chapters. I have problems with it! I’m going to talk about them. But I at least want to first acknowledge the fucking super human feat that is telling a compelling story for 10 years on effectively a weekly basis in a magazine that effectively kicks you end when readership interest in your series gets too low.

This isn’t really a review. It’s not intended for people who haven’t read the series. If I have a thesis statement, it might be this:

My Hero Academia asked a bunch of interesting questions. It’s just a shame that it never really seemed to answer any of them.

Tangent #2

Most villains in the Pokemon games are cartoon characters. Mostly Saturday morning, occasionally Adult Swim. Fundamentally they’re goofy, unambiguously evil, and willing to harm others for their own benefit or in furtherance of their own goals.

The notable exception to this is N.

N is unique as an antagonist for a lot of reasons, but one of the primary ones is that his philosophy of Pokémon liberation and freedom is actually a defensible one. He doesn’t want to rule the world, or remake it, or add extra water. His view questions and potentially exposes issues with the Pokémon world that the games generally skate around.

In that sense then, it’s a shame that his worldview turns out to be effectively manufactured, taught to him by his foster father Ghetsis, a megalomaniac who only did so to manipulate N for his own ends, and to try to take over the world. Another cartoon villain. When N learns he’s being manipulated, he rebels, and joins forces with the player to stop this larger evil.

There is being evil, and then there is dressing in coat covered in eyeballs.

While it’s not an unsatisfying arc, it does mean that the game is never forced to really question or resolve N’s arc.

Is capturing Pokémon the same as slavery? Is the games fundamental premise a bit messed up? Isn’t kind of weird for a game with themes of friendship and teamwork to have the player only really bond with like… 6 of the hundreds you might catch?

I Promise This Is Related

My Hero Academia had effectively the same problem for me. Shigaraki, and his posse are effectively a group that’s been failed by society and are trying to destroy it as a result. Deku and chums are the beneficiaries of that (admittedly imperfect) society, trying to work to maintain it, and improve it.

It’s an interesting balance, and it provides a neat tension. Superhero’s are fundamentally status quo, and MHA took that fact and went “Yes, and” with it.

Saving the day requires that the world be worth saving. MHA does a good job of showing that, but also showing that the status quo is actually pretty broken. There’s a reason villains of MHA are societies outcasts, whether as the result of racism, mental illness, or sexual identity (though that one thread is never really examined).

Then it turns out they’re all being manipulated into doing this by the big bad evil villain who wants to take over the world.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It’s a double bummer because not only does it remove any interesting moral tension, it does it in a way that just kind of sucks.

One of the most exciting bits of MHA is the duel growth/progression of the antagonists and protagonists. The good guys save the day, but the bad guys get a new super weapon. The good guys mostly escape, but the bad guys take a hostage. Escalating tension without having to blow up everything.

Until the biggest evil villain ever returns and he has to be dealt with by any means possible!

Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I really liked how the balance of power between the two is managed. Hero’s are supported by society and have the backing, but they’re also effectively first responders. Being a good hero means being responsible for bystanders, hostages or anyone else, while villains have no social prestige or support, but don’t have to operate under societies rules. Even if both can level buildings, heroes shouldn’t! And for most of the series, they have to operate as such.

Except then of course in the finale the bad guys threaten to destroy all of Japan.

Booooooo

Conclusion

I started writing this a few weeks ago, and decided to put the finishing touches on it right now as another series I was following is also finishing up. So expect more multi-paragraph rants about manga, something I’m sure everyone loves.

I dunno. I’m not really let down by the ending in any meaningful way. I kind of checked out somewhere around chapter 300. The remaining 130 are, looking back on it, pretty mid. My Hero Academia was interesting when it was playing with the idea of a superhero society, and what that meant, something it did far less of for it’s final sets of chapters.

Anyway, I feel slightly more positive about it then I do about the fucking dumpster fire that the last few dozen chapters of Jujutsu Kaisen. So maybe a write up on that when it finishes it’s two final chapters.

Sidequest – Subversion In Games

I’ve got a review on a game called Athenian Rhapsody that I’ve been working on for a while. It will hopefully be up in a week or two. It’s quite a bit longer than most things I write, and I’ve also rewritten and restarted it several times. Athenian Rhapsody is a tricky game to talk about.

While writing that review, I spent a non-zero amount of time looking up two terms—post-modernism and subversion—and learning that they don’t quite mean what I thought.

For post-modernism, I don’t know if I get it at all, especially in the context of games. As an adult, I don’t really engage in the activity of detailed criticism and dissection of works of art outside of this blog. If you want someone to talk about industry best practices, minimal lovable products, and strategic app development, I am your man.

But I’m not a professional critic.

I do think, though, that I can talk about subversion.

In a literal sense, subversion is the attempt overthrow the government, i.e., to go out and pull a Jan 6th. In games, it usually gets used when a game does a “big twist” on some sort of mechanic, or element.

This brings me to the sort of “weird thing” about subversion in art.

First up, for something to be subvert-able, there must be something to be subverted.

For Doki-Doki Literature Club to work (for the player to experience the intended sense of wrongness) the player has to have an expectation about how visual novels should work, and what they’re allowed to do. For Spec Ops: The Line to question the morality and mechanics of the grey/brown setpiece cover shooter, there has to be a pile of jingoistic, “patriotic” games for it to subvert. Otherwise, it’s not much of a “reveal” when it turns out that the player, instead of doing a fun special moment with mortars, has actually gone and committed a war crime.

That second bit is something I spend a lot of time thinking about, mostly when it comes to indie games that want to break the fourth wall. Mostly because of Undertale. I’m sure that there were games that did this before Undertale. I know that the Mother/Earthbound series does it, at least a little bit.

But my experience of Undertale was less one of “breaking” the fourth wall, and more one of removing it: of removing the distinction between the “game” and the “real world.”

Like any magic trick, it’s not real. Undertale is just a computer program, a story. But like any good magic trick, there’s a brief moment where you believe it, even if you know logically it can’t be real.

So why am I talking about any of this?

Well, mostly because games keep trying to do this fourth wall break or meta thing, and often, they do it while following the trappings of Undertale. The problem is, when a game looks and feels like Undertale, it puts me on alert. It lets me know that the magic trick, the fourth wall break, whatever it might be, is coming.

And it just doesn’t work as well. Like a thriller where you know the twist, or a murder mystery where you know the killer—if you know what’s coming, it doesn’t carry the same weight.

So because of that, I feel like with some of these “Weird RPGS” (as I’ve mentally grouped them) I don’t quite get the same punch, or the same experience, and maybe I’m harsher on them than they deserve.

Okay, there’s also another reason

You can’t really double subvert something. Undertale worked because it was subversive, but then it sold three million copies. So if you try and mimic its whole “Murder an Entire Cutesy RPG World” thing, even if your fights are better, even if you have more characters, and better art, what you’re doing is not shocking or subversive, because Undertale already did that!

Playing Undertale changed my expectations, because it changed what I considered possible in games.

I wish more of these sorts of games were trying to surpass Undertale, instead of trying to mimic it.

Million Monster Militia – A Bunch of Unsolicited Feedback

Updated 7/7/2024 – This write up has been updated to include the dev’s response.

Pre-Script: It occurs to me after writing all of this that it will make absolutely no sense if you haven’t actually played the game I’m talking about. Whoops, and sorry. Actual reviews on a game to come later this week.

I’ll do a review of Million Monster Militia at some point, but it won’t be this week. To make a long story short, I think my time would probably be better spent trying to give some constructive feedback then bashing.

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/2358770/header.jpg?t=1719334893

First, some context:
1. Million Monster Militia is a bag builder/slot builder heavily in the vein of Luck Be A Landlord. You draft units, units are randomly placed onto a 5×5 grid, and you try to score enough total points each round to pass a threshold. It has somewhat different framing then Luck Be A Landlord, but that is how it works.
2. I’ve played 16 hours of it. I don’t think this makes me an expert, but I do think it gives me space to have some thoughts.
3. Right now, I don’t recommend the game for a lot of reasons, many of which are fixable/are already being fixed, and a few more which might not be.

Hello developers!

Hopefully this doesn’t come across as rude. Most of the time when I write things for this blog, I aim for a tone of being a perpetually snarky dipshit. Obviously this isn’t quite the correct tone for sincere feedback.

This whole thing is grouped into three parts. The first ones are things I think you NEED to do. When possible, I’ll try to give examples, and say why I think you need to do them.

The second part will be a bunch of general thoughts and feedback, and while you could ignore any suggestions I make here, I suggest you read them at least to hear the thoughts.

The third part is just insane ramblings. I think they’re relevant, but they also could just be wrong.

Okay. Here we go.

Part 1. Please Make These Changes

  1. Fix The Wording Of Unit Abilities
    There are a lot of units in your game. Many of them do not actually do what they say they do. I know you’ve already fixed some of these, but you haven’t fixed all of them. I’m going to give one example, but I had about 10 earlier.

The Time Bomb says that it gives a multiplier of 0X to all units. That’s not true. It doesn’t give a multiplier of 0X to itself. Maybe this was missed because it has base zero damage.

Plenty of your units do things like this. I am begging you to fix them. 

Dev Response:
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll put the example of the time bomb into our bug tracker. It's really easy for descriptions and abilities to get out of sync. If you have more examples of this please let us know so we can fix them!

2. Add An Options Menu
Yes, there already is an options menu. No, these are not enough options.

This is what your game looks like on my screen. There are two critical problems here. First up, there is no resolution, secondly, I cannot actually move the game window.

Maybe everything was coded so that the game can’t be rescaled. Fine. Just add an actual top bar or something so I can drag it around then. 

Dev Response:
You should be able to move the game window with the arrow keys, and resize it by dragging on the corners.


3. Keywords/Codex/Readability
A bunch of folks on your Discord have already suggested this one, and even better, they suggested good keywords, so I’m not going to dig too much into this one. But yeah. Better readability on units, keywords/key text being called out, and things like the codex having filters or searches would all be nice. 

Dev Response:
Agreed that these would be nice to have! It would be quite an undertaking currently as it'd require rewording all the units, and some things work almost the same, which means we'd have to probably change how some things work to line up under these keywords. I agree this would be nice an ideal world, but we'll have to weigh the benefits against the time it would take to implement.

4. Have Units That Create Additional Units Show Those Units
For any unit that creates an additional unit/item/etc, make it so that I can see what that unit is. Here’s how Luck Be A Landlord does it. You mouse over a unit, and a pop-up of information shows up above that.

I don’t need you to make it pop-up. For all I care, it can open a link to a Wiki page if it has to. But I need it to show me what the extra units it generates does.

Note: I’m aware that there’s something to be said for the wonder of discovery and experimentation, but I think at a fundamental level you’re making a bag builder, and that means I should be allowed to know what’s going into my bag. 

Dev Response:
Another thing that would be very nice to have, but quite difficult to implement! We do already have this on our radar if we find the time to do it.

5. Let Me Skip The Campaign Cut-scene, Let Me Fast Forward Damage
So now we’re veering into really nitpicky, but demonstrable territory. I don’t want to have to skip past the opening cutscene each time I open the game, it’s just kinda frustrating. Also, having timed it, I think that a full round (deploy/activate/return) takes about 10 seconds, which is just about (give or take a bit) twice as much as Luck Be A Landlord. Yes, it’s minor, but it adds up, and I think it does contribute to why I feel so burnt out after a game of MMM. It would be nice if there was a way for it to go faster. 

Dev Response: The cutscene playing multiple times is a bug. Fast Forward damage is a little tricky but enough people requested it, that it should be on the list...

Part 2. General Rambling

You read the first whole bit. Awesome. This next bit is just a bunch of rambling, but I’ll try to keep it concise.

1. Going to War With the Army You Have
I’ve seen other people say this as well, but I really feel like I have to force builds to win. Synergy doesn’t feel like enough to clear anything past the tutorial. Maybe I’m not very good. But also,I’ve played for more than 10 hours. Usually I have a good handle on a game after that much gameplay. I’m not sure how I stayed bad in this one specific game.

2. Some of These Units Just Feel Bad
Time Bomb and Focus Shrine I am looking at you. I get that technically there is a use case for Time Bomb where you pick it up to stall rounds out while digging for more units? I guess? But it’s rare, so I’ve never actually done that?

And Focus Shrine. Okay, I do not understand this one. In exchange for doubling the damage of SOME of my units, I take double damage? Why? Is it because I’m supposed to draft multiple copies of it? Is there something obvious I’m missing?

Honorable mention for Biologist here. It increases the damage of plants. There are a total of 2 plants, and one of them eats humans.

Which Biologist is.

3. Some of These Units Are Always Good
Hello, Med Kit, Extra-Health, and Extra Life. Each one of these units should just have the text “Take an additional turn” on them. They are always good. There is no cost to taking them other then opportunity cost of the other items that they are compared to. They fit into every single build I’ve ever done.

It just seems weird to have a subset of items that work in every single build.

4. Do I have to Play Through The Entire Campaign To Unlock Custom Mode?
This one is like… just a question. Do I? Because a custom mode to place units and test stuff would be more useful to me while trying to beat the campaign, than after I beat it.

Part 3. It is entirely possible I am wrong about everything I express in this part.

Okay, so now we’re in the third part. Again, congrats on releasing your game, and reading through everything I’ve written so far. I’m not sure the approx $7 I gave you really requires you listening to all of this, but I’m either putting it here, or in the final review of the game, so I’m putting it here for now.

I think that some of what might be hurting my experience with the game is that while you’ve used a sort of base structure from Luck Be A Landlord, you’ve pushed certain parts of the system in directions that aren’t actually more fun.

Here’s a few big ones:
1. LBAL allows the player to continue drafting and playing through a full cycle even if the engine they’ve constructed clears the current target quickly, but MMM forces the player to advance when they beat a target. In LBAL, I’m rewarded for overly successful builds with more room to maneuver and pivot into the late game, in MMM I’m punished for them.
2. LBAL has systems that open possible builds without punishing me, specifically items and essences. These give me freedom find build-arounds and perma multipliers. But every thing in MMM is a unit, which means even if a unit can open a path to victory, it can just as easily end up being dead weight if the right support doesn’t show up.

Okay, and finally:

I think the fundamental math of adjacency is a bit broken in MMM.

To be clear, I am open to being dead wrong on this. I am not good at math. But I think the fact that you’re using a 5×5 grid compared to LBAL’s 4×5 means that you’ve pushed the odds of any two items being next to each from just about 30% down to 19%, or from just under 1/3 to 1/5.

Ed Note: Okay, I know the math here is actually wrong, because at best, I solved for the comparative odds of placing a object, then placing a second object and the object being adjacent, but those odds DO serve as upper bound. So assuming math is right, MMM is less likely to have favorable adjacency for any two things then LBAL is.

There are a lot of units that care about what they’re next to in MMM, but I think the odds are much lower, and this might be part of WHY it feels much harder to create synergistic builds that run across multiple archetypes (Monster Hunter + Hydra + something else, because it’s just much less likely you hit the favorable locations).

Conclusion

Congrats on releasing your game. I’m glad that you’re working to fix some of the stuff in the Beta branch. You have a interesting mechanical base to work with here, I hope you continue to work to improve the game, and if you read this entire thing I am sorry.

Also sorry for all the comparisons to Luck Be A Landlord.

Should Paradox Engine be banned in Historic Brawl?

It seems like every few months, I see an argument about Paradox Engine in Brawl and Historic Brawl formats. Someone comes in, complains about the card, other people agree or push back, and then everything returns to normal.

Rinse, repeat.

Given how often this happens, I thought I’d take some time to lay out my view, so I stop typing it out every time this happens.

Paradox Engine art by Vincent Proce

As always, my sources for this are in the spreadsheet.

What gets a card banned in Historic Brawl?

There are several things that can get a card banned from Historic Brawl by WoTC. Some are very clear and easy to understand, while others are much more subjective.

Ban Gang 2024

The easiest category of bans to understand are cards that shutdown wide classes commanders. Examples include Sorcerous Spyglass and Chalice of the Void.

The second more subjective category are cards that are “too powerful.” This includes Channel, Demonic Tutor, Natural Order, Tainted Pact, and Oko, Thief of Crowns.

And then we have the the rest of them. Cards that are banned for reasons specific to the card themselves. Lutri, Agent of Treachery, Field of the Dead, Ugin the Spirit Dragon, and Nexus of Fate. We’ll call this group the “Weird Ones.”

So here’s my take: if you want to argue that a card should be banned from Historic Brawl, you need to argue that the card falls into one of these categories.

Does Paradox Engine do that?

Let’s go through the categories.

Category One: Shuts off a wide class of commanders
Paradox Engine doesn’t do this. Easy!

Category Two: Too powerful
This one’s a bit harder to quantify, but we can look at the results from the cHB Season 12 tourney for some info. While this event as a whole only had 33 players, across the top 8, there were zero copies of Paradox Engine played.

Maybe you’re not convinced. Lets go back a bit further.

SeasonCopies of Paradox Engine in Top 8
110
100
9(Couldn’t find data)
80
70, but one decklist was missing

Many of these decks do play The One Ring. Some play up to seven mana rocks. As far as I can tell, none of them play Paradox Engine, and Paradox Engine isn’t banned from the event. So, no. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence the card is “Too Powerful.”

Quick Note: The data only goes back so far, and notably, doesn’t include a point in time I mentally refer to as “Rusko Hell.” I’m open to the idea that maybe Paradox Engine was a bit much then, but the current state of things doesn’t indicate Paradox Engine needs a ban.

Category Three: The Weird Ones
And this is where things gets difficult, since we can no longer look at general usage, or card abilities to easily determine if something belongs here. Instead, we have to go through cards one by one. Do any of these cards offer parallels to Paradox Engine?

Lutri: Nope! Lutri is banned as a result of companion making him into an auto-include.
Field of the Dead: Field of the Dead was banned in multiple formats, mostly for power level. In Brawl, it was an auto-include that was a strong payoff for any deck running more then 6 different lands, with very little downside. As we’ve already noted, Paradox Engine doesn’t have a high play rate, so this doesn’t count either.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Ugin was a strong colorless board-wipe that could be slotted into any deck, and there was very little reason to not do so. It was also called out for being overly prevalent in main decks. Again, no overlap in function.
Agent of Treachery: Agent of Treachery could go in either category two or three. I include it three because I think it’s less a direct factor of power-level, and more an issue of breaking color-identity and being overplayed. It was effectively permanent removal that could be used recursively. But again, no clear relationship with Paradox Engine.

This leaves just a single card left to try to use to justify a Paradox Engine ban in Brawl.

Nexus of Fate: The Most Complicated Ban in Arena History

Most bans get a line or two, or maybe a few sentences. Nexus of Fate gets six paragraphs.

The short version is that it’s banned for play disruption. Arena doesn’t allow easy combos/loops. WoTC decided that 30 minutes to have a game non-interactively resolve was a bit much. So it got banned.

This is the closest we get to a comparable card for Paradox Engine: a card that was banned for causing non-interactive, slow loops.

So now things can go either way.

Like Nexus of Fate, Paradox Engine can slow down games. It requires manually tapping all your non-land mana sources in the Arena client to use it optimally and try to go infinite, and it’s non-interactive. It can often end the game outright once it comes down, if you get lucky and have the right tools. And it’s very, very boring to play against.

But it’s also not a perfect match. Paradox Engine doesn’t perform an infinite loop based off luck to anywhere near the extent that Nexus of Fate does. Once Paradox Engine comes out, it either gets removed and the combo ends, or it sits there and continually provides resources for whoever played it until they win, or run out of actions to take.

My Take

Personally, I lean against banning Paradox Engine at the moment. It’s nowhere near widespread enough to make it a “necessary” ban, and its existence is a win-con for several decks. That doesn’t mean that it should never be banned, but the mild frustration it produces is outweighed by the neat decks it allows to exist.

Still, there are strong arguments both ways and (in theory) as more and more cards, and more and more mana rocks are added to Brawl, the scales (in theory) start to tip toward a ban.

But right now?

Paradox Engine doesn’t need to be banned.